Takemura Itsuki

“I FUCKING KNEW IT!”

“HAHAHASHAAHAA!”

In the front stood the figure of me, who was looking in front of me at the white bedsheet with two big red dots drawn on it, with an eerie smile with sharp zig-zag teeth which covered the whole mouth. My mouth was open and so were my eyes. “I FUCKING KNEW THAT YOU WERE JUST TRYNA SCARE ME!”

Haruto, who was behind me, pushed me a step back by my collar and whispered, “Stop cussing in front of the kids.”

A small kid was laughing in front of me with his face covered with both his hands which made it look unrealistic and utterly childish. “Heheheh, so the brother was right!”

Another kid beside him pointed his finger at me and said with a smile, “I knew that you were a coward the first time I heard about you from onii-san!”

“Shut up, you good-for-nothing brat!” I shouted at him. “Imma beat you to your pulp! Just come and fight someday in the Immortal Combat Go!”

Haruto pushed me a step back again as he laughed. “Aha, no, Itsuki!”

“Takemura-kun is such a scaredy-cat!” The third one, wearing the exact same combo of shorts and a half-sleeved t-shirt as the others, commented and the other two laughed.

“Grrr!” I angrily looked at them with my frowning eyes and my tightened teeth. “What do you think you a—”

“What irony, man!” Haruto shouted. “Even I didn’t know you were so easily scared by some non-existence piece of life-form!”

I sighed, turned my head down, and said in a relatively low voice, “Well, that’s a pretty philosophical and posh way of keeping it…” I then noticed something besides my right foot. I looked at that box-like structure kept beside my right foot. It had some graphical images of some distant lands on top of the box and something in white text written on top of the black background. “W-What’s this?” I said as I pointed at it. I turned my head up and turned back at Haruto. “Did you notice it before?”

He turned his head below on the box. “It seems like a packed video game, doesn’t it?” He concluded.

I turned my head downward, and then bent my back a little while raising my hand at the box. It really was made of plastic, and as I moved it up, I turned it to the other side and looked at the fantastical character in a blue robe on top of a black pair of pants and a dark brown pair of ankle-length boots. That 3-D character had a sword on his back, and had long chestnut-colored hairs. “It kinda looks like Link from The Legend of Zelda.”

“Have you played it?” A childish voice asked me. I turned my head left and looked at one of those kids looking at me.

I maturely replied to him, “Y-Yeah. Pretty tough for someone of your age, to be honest.”

“But, since when is it here?” Haruto asked. “And what’s that written on top of it?” He asked as he pointed on the cover.

I looked at the box again and read the text written on top of the box. “Isekai. Wanna get isekai’d? It’s now only three thousand seven hundred and forty yen afar.”

“Well, that’s not a fair name I’d like to buy,” Haruto commented in disgust. “The title looks so… like the creators didn’t even try working for it.”

“And the text below it too. Every store sells its games at different prices. And what if this game is on sale? What if it’s actually being sold at a cheaper rate, but the rates are written below the backside of the box, and that’s the problem.”

“No one will consider checking the actual price, right?” Haruto enquired as he looked at me.

I nodded. “That’s some bad business if you’d ask me. As a gamer myself, I’m never gonna play it.”

“But wait, why are we thinking about all this stuff and not about why it was kept here?” Another one of the kids asked.

Haruto looked down at him, crossed his hands, bit his index finger, and then turned at me. “So, what are we gonna do now?”

“I-It’s kinda scary that a video game packet pops beneath my feet all of a sudden.”

“Well, so what are we gonna do it?”

“Play it, maybe,” I straightforwardly replied.

“Huh?” He looked at me with disgust. “What’s that logic?”

“Maybe it was meant to be played by me. No one can defeat fate, can it?” I asked him.

“I-I meant that maybe we should find its owner, or maybe we should give this to the polic—”

“We can open this game, and if there’s any saved data, then we can find out at once who’s its owner.”

At my straight reply, he stood speechless as he looked at me with his expressionless eyes. “Were you trying to be comedic right there?” He asked.

“No, I was tryna make a fool out of you,” I replied with a smile. Then, I turned at the game in my hands and said, “Then let’s open this shitty game and see to whom it belongs to.”